


The Danger is I'm Dangerous

by Overdressedtokill (SkyeStan)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU, Emotionless!Skye, Gen, Skye with Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 16:58:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1477141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyeStan/pseuds/Overdressedtokill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Skye breaks under a week of HYDRA torture, she gains alien powers in exchange for her humanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Danger is I'm Dangerous

One moment, she feels the endless agony of the machine, trying to wrench out her secrets.  She thinks of Ward, petting her hair the night before, every night, begging her to talk.

“I’ll make it stop,” he’d say, “but you have to talk.”  She hears his voice ringing in her ears, a soft sound, and then she hears something else.  His true voice.  The things he said when she hid behind doors, or when he thought she was unconscious.  The machine hurts like nothing else, boiling her blood, melting her brain.  

“Ward said he’s been working her,” a soldier says.  “Why isn’t she talking?” They think she can’t hear them, when she’s strapped into the machine.  She can hear them.  She’s been listening to them all week, as they’ve discussed the best ways to hurt her.  To torture her.  She thinks of all the times Ward told her he’d make it stop.  

Someone cranks up the machine, as they always do.  But it’s different, today.  Her body is exhausted.  Her brain is screaming.  She’s shutting down.  She should talk.  She should talk and make it stop.  She thinks of Ward.  She thinks of Coulson.  The team.  The torture, a week’s worth.  And she screams.

It hits her like lighting.  A burst of anger, of _something,_ running through her, wiping her clean.  The lights are buzzing overhead.  They begin to shatter, one after the other.  She thinks of Ward and feels nothing.  She thinks of Coulson and feels nothing.  There is something else.  Something better.  Power.  That’s it.  Power.

 

 

Her eyes snap open.  She hadn’t realized that she’d shut them.  The machine is off.  Broken.  She has a gun pointed right between her eyes.

“What did you do?” the soldier asks.  She blinks.  She flexes her fingers.  She’s still restrained.  She strains. Stretches her fingers as far as they’ll go.  It’s there.  It’s bubbling, bubbling-she can feel it behind her eyes, in her heart, through her teeth as she grits them together.  Almost. There.

“What did you do?” the soldier repeats.  He presses his gun to her forehead.  It’s cold.  Unyielding.  There.  There.  He is just meat.  Just human.  She can feel every human in the room, every body, every life.  Focus on that.  Find it.  Hearts beating.  Lungs breathing.  Bones, muscles, blood.  Do it.

 

 

She curls and flexes her fingers again.  She knows their bodies, now.  She knows.  She lifts them from the ground and flings them back.  She hears their hearts pound.  She will crush them, from her chair.  Her wrists are still bound, but all she needs are her hands and her will.  Her fingers press into the metal.  Press down.  Pressure on bodies.  Pressure on bones.  She hears cracks all around her.  Screams.  Spines snapping.  Her fingertips are white.  Organs being ruptured.  The power, her power, denied for so long.

“I don’t know what I did,” she announces to the bodies.  There are more people coming.  She can tell.  She will wait for them.  Let them see. 

 

 

Her restraints, though.  They make her wrists ache.  She pulls up and they snap off.  Easy.  So easy.  Why hadn’t she done this before?  This is amazing.  This power.  It’s all that matters.  It’s all that she is.  The footsteps.  They’re here.

 

“Holy hell,” Garrett says.  Skye stands for him.  For him and Ward.  She has shown her work.

“Skye,” Ward says.  She spares him a distant gaze.  She remembers him telling her something, but she can’t put her finger on it.  She thinks she might’ve liked him.  Felt something for him.  Had she?  Had she felt anything at all? He had no idea.  She’d never told him what she was.  She hadn’t known.  How nice, that they could find out together.  How romantic.

“Skye,” Ward says, trailing behind his master.  “Did you do this?”

“I did,” she says.

“How?” Ward asks.  

How.  She’ll show him.  A demonstration.  Arms out.  Hands flexed.  Lock their knees.  That’s it.  Just like that.  She knows every bone in her body.  She doesn’t need to know how she does.

“Well fuck me,” Garrett says, putting his hands on his frozen legs.  “You’ve got powers.”  Still such amusement.  Still such smugness.  Break him.  Do it.

“I guess so,” she says.  Her hand curls forward, and so does Garrett.  He falls to the floor.  He sprawls.  He cries out in misery.  In pain.  Claws at the ground.  Ward is terrified.  She can sense it.  Feel it in his heart.  He looks at his master scrambling on the ground.  He looks back to her, wide-eyed.

“Whatever’s going on with you,” Ward tells her.  “I can help you.”  She has a free hand.  She shows him her palm.  Forces his arms to his sides.  Stills his muscles.  Traps him in his own body.  For now.

“You both think you’re so strong,” she says.  “So mighty.”  She brings her arm down.  The one controlling Garrett.  She watches him twist in pain.  “But I know the truth,” she says.  “You’re just humans, looking for a way to beat that one simple fact.”  She watches as something, something unknown to her, crawls under the skin of Garrett’s face.  Worms, maybe?  Parasites?  She knows they are of her making.  She knows they hurt.  “You’re weak,” she tells them, both of them.  “Powerless.  Human.”  Human.  Hadn’t she been human?  No.  Never.  She balls her hand into a fist.  Garrett gives one choked gasp and crumples before her.  Not dead.  She’ll wait.

 

 

 

“Ward,” she says.  Her palm still flat.  Ward’s body still bound.  She looks at Ward but does not see him.  Not in the way she once did.  She sees a body to be manipulated.  A liar that needs to pay.  “You’re not human.  You’re nothing more than a trained guard dog.”

“Skye,” he pleads, “don’t-”

“Dogs don’t give orders,” she tells him. “Dogs obey.”  She can feel her will tightening his throat, rendering him silent.  “Heel for me. Sit.” 

His knees give out from under him, wrenching him to the floor.  She feels him trying to fight it, feels the straining of his muscles.  So she pushes harder.  She wants to make it hurt.  To really hurt.  His knees crack against the floor.  It’s not enough.  She wants him bent.  Shamed.  She pulls at him.  Strains the muscles of his back as his spine curves and his hands snap forward, pressing into the floor.

“That’s where you belong,” she tells him.  “Like the animal you are.”  She pushes down on him.  His arms bend.  He cannot speak, but he can make horrible, pained gasps.  She relishes them.  She forces more will onto him.  She feels him getting weaker.

“Do you remember what I asked you, Ward?” she asks.  She steps forward.  “When we first met.  I asked you if you’d ever killed anyone.”

He dares to look up at her, with pleading brown eyes. Like the Ward she knows.  Like the lie.  She snaps his head back down.  She can feel the blood in his body.

“How much innocent blood have you spilled?”  she demands.  She is cutting off the blood in his neck.  Choking him. His breaths are getting desperate.  Wheezing.

“Are you scared?” she asks.  “Were you going to kill me, Ward?  Spill my blood.”  With the last of his movement, he shakes his head.  

She sneers.  “Liar,” she tells him.  He needs to be punished.  He needs it.  He deserves it.  He begins to cough and gasp until blood (not his, Skye doesn’t know where it came from) spills out of his mouth in horrible retches.  And keeps coming.  And coming.  His mouth is a fountain, stained red.  He falls to his side.  He shuts his eyes, and the flow stops.  Drool and excess blood pool by the side of his mouth, leaking onto the floor.

“How does it feel?” she asks him, watching the his chest shake.  “How does it taste?”  She puts her hand in his hair, damp with sweat and slick against her fingers.  She pulls her his head back.

“Did you ever really care about me?” she asks.  His eyes flicker open just a fraction.  He is beaten.  He is weak.  “Answer me.”  She knows that she still has a grip on his throat, on his voice, but she wants to watch him struggle.  He tries to speak, but no sound comes save for a strained squeak.  She pushes her power harder against is throat.  He will black out soon.  And then she feels it, a burst in his thoughts, directed right at her.  An affirmation.  A _yes._

“I hate you,” she tells him, and savors the pain that shoots through him.  Not the physical kind.  The horrible, heart-breaking kind. “Pathetic little boy.”  She says.  His eyes shut again.  He’s lost too much air.  He passes out.  She lets go of his hair and lets him fall.  She idly touches the wet blood around his lips.  It just appeared out of thin air.  She did that.  She’d forced that from him, made him weak.  She’d won.

 

 

 

“Are you going to kill him?”  Raina asks.  Skye jumps to her feet.  Stretches out her hand as a warning. She’s ready.  She’s taken everyone else out.  She can take out Raina.  Raina, who is not scared or angry or shocked, but smiling sweetly.  Raina, who came in without Skye noticing.  Somehow.

“I might,” Skye says.  

Raina glides forward.  When her eyes pass over Garrett’s unconscious body, Skye detects a hint of admiration.  Not for Garrett.  For Skye.  For her powers.

“You’re gifted,” Raina says, almost giddy.  She looks to Skye with sparkling eyes. 

“I am,” Skye says.  Skye isn’t really sure what to call herself anymore.  She doesn’t feel human.  She doesn’t feel like SHIELD.  She feels powerful. Gifted is a good word for it.  The gift of overwhelming power that will set her free.

“We got off on the wrong foot,” Raina says.  “All this time, following a man I thought had the gift of clairvoyance.  But in the end, he led me to you.”  She holds out her hand.  “Raina,” she says.  

Skye knows this.  But she still extends her own hand in return.

“Skye,” she says.  Raina has soft hands.  Warm hands.

“Oh,” Raina says.  She leans in.  Her thumb wipes under Skye’s nose, collecting black blood.  “You over-exerted yourself.  How are you feeling?”

Skye brings her hand to her nose.  “Woozy, actually.”

“I’ve been waiting for someone like you,” Raina says.  “Someone to believe in.”  She rolls out the words in breathy delight.  Smiles at Skye with genuine interest.

“We should get out of here,” Skye says.  “Leave them to clean up the mess.”

“So you’re not going to kill them?” Raina says.  She has just the hint of a frown.

Skye looks down.  Looks at Ward.  Breathing slowly.  Something scrapes at her insides.

“Not today,” Skye says.  The feeling is gone. “I want to wait.  Watch them scramble.”

“I agree,” Raina says, voice like honey.  “When you do kill them, it should really mean something.  You’re so angry right now.”

“I am,” Skye says.  She grasps Raina’s wrist.  “Come on.  Let’s go.”

“Back to SHIELD?” Raina says.

“There is no SHIELD,” Skye tells her.  “And if there was, there’s no place for me there anymore.”

 

 

Raina nods, following as Skye steps over Ward and runs up the stairs.

“You seem different, somehow,” Raina says.  “Less human.”  She’s excited.  Raina loves this, Skye realizes.  And Raina’s right.  The second Skye’s powers turned on, her humanity turned off.

Skye grins for the first time in a week.  “I’m not human,” Skye says.  “I never was.”

“I know a place for us to go,” Raina says.  “A safehouse.”

“You’re not afraid of me?” Skye asks.

Raina’s eyes seem to glow.  She moves her wrist out of Skye’s grasp and replaces it with her small hand. 

“I’m going to watch you hone your talents,” Raina says.  She is gentle with her words.  With her hand.  “I’m not scared.  I’ve never been more excited.”  Her grin makes Skye grin, though there is nothing behind it.  

Raina squeezes Skye’s hand.  Her eyes are glitter and sparks.  Skye looks down, at their hands intertwined.  She sucks in a breath.  She is not SHIELD, she is not HYDRA, and she is not human.  Skye feels the sparks of alien power in her blood.  She feels nothing else.  And it is wonderful.


End file.
